perchance to dream
by keep my issues drawn
Summary: It would be so much easier that way, if no one cared. Then she wouldn't have to suffer through pain to ease the pain of others. —Lucy/Louis, as Lucy suffers with guilt following Fred II's death and begins to wonder if there's really a point to anything at all. For Maddie. High T for suicide and depression.


okay, so this is for the beautiful maddie (**garfields**)'s birthday. i've known you for just under a year and you're absolutely wonderful. i hope this doesn't depress you too much. this is also for the divination section of the school subjects competition on hpfc and the song of the day thread (october 27th) over on ngf.

apologies for my terrible graphic making skills.

this involves _cousincest_ and _depression/suicide_. please do not read if either of those things are offensive/triggering to you.

hp belongs to jkr, asleep belongs to the smiths (and i recommend listening to it while reading this) and hamlet belongs to william shakespeare.

* * *

Don't feel bad for me

I want you to know

Deep in the cell of my heart

I will feel so glad to go

―Asleep, The Smiths

* * *

She doesn't like to remember. Thoughts and memories and clouds that pass across her mind are seldom welcome, as each one bring tears or a sad smile that is more of a grimace at how cruel reality can be. Of all people, perhaps Lucy knows just how harsh the real world can be the best.

Names and faces and numbers seem to cross each other and get mixed up in the caverns of Lucy's mind and try and make her see a little more each day just how bad everything is, even though she already knows everything they tell her. She wishes the facts and the statistics would go away—the world is cruel enough without it all being put together and treated as stone cold and unmovable.

A beautiful mess, that's what she is. Before, she was just beautiful, but there's rarely a day where not even a single tear makes its way down her cheek, or a day when her eyes don't glaze over as she remembers things she'd rather not. There are better days, of course; days that she doesn't think hurt too much but there is always a nagging in the back of her mind, begging her to remember. She doesn't want to. She doesn't. But the facts and figures and the faces that rush past as quickly as a moving train don't seem to realise that and everything keeps spinning for Lucy and she just wants it to stop.

It won't stop. She knows that. But the crushing reality of the situations she's landed in doesn't take away that single strand of hope remaining that tells her that it could stop—

That it could get better. It won't, of course, but there's still a single bit of resistance that refuses to give in, that believes that maybe she can forget about the pain she's felt and the pain she's feeling now can stop demanding to be felt so strongly, stop pushing at her to acknowledge the fact that she's not got anyone now.

That shred of resistance sometimes hurts too much. Maybe it would be easier if there was no hope left, no one who really cared—that way, she could let go more easily. That way, she could let go of everything and not have a single feeling of guilt about the people that she'll leave behind. Because—however much her brain denies it—there are people who still care about her. And she almost hates them for that, for caring about her because it means that she has to think of them, too, and not just leave and pretend that nobody would care.

It would be so much easier that way, if no one cared. Then she wouldn't have to suffer through pain to ease the pain of others.

And she knows what it's like to be left behind. She's felt what they would feel if she did it, and she knows how it racks through your body and almost seems to become you, the grief, become a part of your existence and latches onto your heart and doesn't really ever go away. She's screamed that scream when she found him, she's felt the denial, pretending that he's okay and is just unconscious. And then when finding out that he's dead, pretending that she thinks that it was an accident, he didn't do it on purpose. Looking back, she almost laughs. No one accidentally swallows a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

The worst thing that she's felt is the guilt. The nagging voice that demands her to listen, telling her that if she'd only been there, if she'd only asked, if only she'd done so much more than she ever did—

He would still be alive. And she wouldn't be waking up screaming in the middle of the night to visions of him on the floor with glassy eyes and cold skin and—

She wouldn't crying herself to sleep on Louis' shoulder every night, wouldn't be darting her eyes to the cabinet that she keeps the sleeping pills in that she's now locked. If she caused his death… if she did.

And she can't even finish that sentence because—

She can't.

.

"I'm okay," Fred whispered to her.

Lucy almost believed it, but there was a break in his voice when he said it, as though he was trying not to cry and his bottom lip wass wobbling and all she could see wass the tears building up in his eyes.

"You're not," she looked him right in the eyes and told him a fact that they knows so well. "You're not okay and we both know that."

"Just leave me alone, Lucy," he muttered at her, and she almost flinched from the harsh tone behind his words. "I don't want to talk."

It hurts. It hurts that he wouldn't talk to her, didn't trust her enough to talk to. Lucy knew that it's was just that he wanted to cry.

And it's a moment that she'll look back on for the rest of her life, screaming at her past self to insist on staying, not to do the very thing she did next.

"Okay," she said. "But we're talking tomorrow."

Fred didn't acknowledge her statement and Lucy stood up and left the room, closed the door, and only then did she let herself cry.

When the door closed, the moment reeked of finality.

.

Louis has to tell her every day that it wasn't her fault. And Lucy still doesn't really believe it. Louis isn't stupid. He sees the state she's in, with her broken nails that she chews on and pretends that no one notices. He sees her sometimes when she's just sitting alone in her flat and idly holding a cigarette, rolling it between her fingers. She doesn't even smoke. They're Fred's. She feels secure when she holds them. Like Fred isn't gone, that he's just around the corner and she's waiting for him with his cigarettes, like before.

And Louis knows that Fred was the best friend Lucy ever had and he knows that she's broken but he wishes she'd get better and maybe be okay.

But he's not stupid. He knows that she's breaking—_broken_—and he knows that she's dying inside—_dead inside—_and maybe he does know that there's no use, but he's holding on. To that little bit of hope. The little bit of hope that tells him that it'll be okay, that Lucy isn't going to follow Fred into the unknown, that Lucy will be okay and she'll get better and she'll stop crying every time she finds something of Fred's.

And he's fooling himself. Deep down, he knows it, but he cares too much about her to acknowledge the fact that it's a lost cause, that Lucy is already dead, really.

.

The world is so mediocre, Lucy thinks. It flashes by in a single instant, lampposts and cars and trains and magic and quills and people laughing and crying and playing and dancing and _being_. And it's mediocre, really, because there's so much of it but none of it means a single thing.

She used to try and find meaning in the smallest of things. The bud of a flower in the spring, or a single raindrop falling just seconds before the storm begins and the world erupts into chaos. But now she just sees it as simple, stupid things that happen just because, not because of anything in particular but just because they happen and will keep happening after she's died, after everyone is dead and there is nothing left but there will always be insignificant things.

Lucy is one of them.

Maybe everyone is one of those insignificant things that float by and mean nothing, absolutely nothing. And maybe anyone who tries to make something of their life is stupid because their life is nothing. Maybe.

And of course there's still that smidgen of hope, but it harms more than it heals, it ruins more than it reaps, and it threatens to tear Lucy apart, rather than put her back together.

And she doesn't even know why Louis tries to help her, why he tells her every day that it wasn't her fault. That Fred's death was a tragic thing that couldn't be avoided.

She hates it when people say that. It could have been avoided. She could have helped, could have listened, could have been there for him more and refused to go when he told her to leave.

Louis tells her that she's beautiful, that she's wonderful, that there's more and that there's hope. And she's told him in return of that small smidgen of hope that hurts her and he tells her she has to be patient, wait for things to get better.

But maybe things won't get better. Maybe the good times she's had are as good as it gets and now she just has to wait until the end. Unless she makes the end herself, on her own terms.

She expected more, she really did; more of everything and less of the pain, of course. But she expected more. Really.

.

When the lights are weak and Lucy is too, Louis is there, holding her and letting her cry. That's the way most nights go, and Lucy isn't sure why Louis is always there for her. It's strange, really.

"I've always wanted to kiss you," he tells her, and there's a silence that seems to define humanity while they both wait for Lucy to reply.

"Oh." she replies, and curses herself for not saying anything better.

They lapse into another silence and Louis holds her until the sun comes up and as he gets up to go she captures his face with her hand.

"I've been thinking," she says. "I'd quite like to kiss you. If that's okay."

And Louis leans in and kisses her and he expects it to be perfect. Because he's always wondered what it would be like to feel her lips against his, even though he's known that it's wrong. But they've been close—not as close as Lucy and Fred, but close—and he's always thought it would be perfect.

But Lucy's lips are cold and when he kisses her he feels like he's making it worse and so he leaves after a few seconds and hopes that he was just imagining the feeling that everything that is Lucy is leaving.

And he tries not to think of how he'll cope when Lucy leaves him behind.

And he tries not to think why now it's not an 'if'' but a 'when'.

.

Maybe it would be easier on both of them if their existence ended. But they both know it's not that easy. And they both care about each other too much to hurt them. Or to leave them behind. And they both wish that their emotions would just leave because they don't need them. They wish the hope and the love would leave because it just makes everything more complicated.

And perhaps it is their very humanity that makes it so hard.

.

"I love you," he says, and he doesn't really know whether or not his words are true.

They should be true. He should love Lucy now, after he's loved her in secret for all of these years, but there's a part of him that knows that he doesn't. That she doesn't love him and he doesn't love her. They can't, not after everything. It seems as though they're stone cold now, like they're nothing and unlovable and―

Caring about someone deeply isn't the same as loving them.

And Louis is sure that he could have loved her once but maybe their chance to love each other is gone.

Because how can you love someone when you can't even love a single part of yourself?

And how can you love someone when every bit of hope you possess is something you despise and wish you didn't have anymore?

And how can you love someone when they're the reason you're in pain, because the only way you can stop your own pain is to hand what you're feeling over to them?

But he'll whisper 'I love you', and kiss her and tell her she's beautiful and that Fred's death wasn't her fault, and that it's not true that she's nothing, it's not true that she's worthless and stupid and she shouldn't hate herself because there's nothing she could have done to prevent Fred's death. He'll tell her that things will get better. That it's going to be okay.

The worst lie he tells her is that it's going to be okay.

It's not going to be okay.

It never will be, for them.

* * *

To die, to sleep

To sleep, perchance to dream

―Hamlet, William Shakespeare

* * *

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